Connecting users to a remote system using an application component is well-known and readily appreciated by those of skill in the art. Conventionally, a user can use a browser to communicate a request to a web server. The web server can process the request and forward it to an application server that includes a predetermined or limited number of threads available for handling requests. The application server can allocate a thread to the request, and the thread service the request by, for example, performing a function, or retrieving a file. However, as the number of available threads on the application server may be limited, the application server typically may only be able to handle a predetermined number of requests before the requests are queued. In the event the application server experiences an outage when there are a large number of requests, users may end up waiting a significant amount of time to find out that the application server has experienced an outage, which can result in a diminished user experience. Furthermore, the allocation of threads and the queuing of requests to an unavailable remote system ties up resources which could be used more efficiently.
A conventional solution for this problem is the use of connection pooling that involves the establishment of a pool of database connections between the application server and the data source which can be shared by application components on the application server. This limits the creation of new connections because existing connections from the pool of database connections may be used, which saves resources. However, when the application server goes down, the diminished user experience associated with the amount of time a user waits to find out that the remote system has experienced an outage remains.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a system for outage avoidance absent the disadvantages found in the prior methods discussed above.